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It’s not a question of evidence, but the law. There is no “duty to deal” with other firms. But if you choose to do so, you have to do so fairly.
by jxdxbx 3y ago
It’s not a question of evidence, but the law. There is no “duty to deal” with other firms. But if you choose to do so, you have to do so fairly.
- scarface_74 3y agoThis is not true. There is no such thing as having to deal “fairly”. You are completely free to make different deals with different customers reason #1367 that HN commenters make horrible lawyers
- wizardwes 3y agoExcept fairly doesn't mean the same deals with different customers? It's perfectly fair to charge lower fees to someone already proven, while charging higher for someone who is just starting out. It's perfectly fair to have the same asking price for something, but sell it for less to someone who actually negotiated for it.
- rezonant 3y agoIt's almost like this stuff has nothing to do with fairness, and actually has to do with leveraging your market position to behave anti competitively.
- omeid2 3y agoNo, you're not completely free to make different deals with different customers, the imperative word here being "completely". For example, RRPs are generally considered illegal, you can't force your customers to sale at specified minimum price, and more crucially, you can't do it selectively.
- scarface_74 3y agoSo define your legal definition of “treating customers fairly”
- omeid2 3y agoWell, the exact definition depends on the jurisdictions, but just about any market has fair trading regulations that at least outline what is considered unfair treatment.
- scarface_74 3y agoWell this case is in the US. What are the “fair trading” laws that force companies to treat all customers equally
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- COGlory 3y agoAllow me to direct you to the Wikipedia entry on "collusion" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion
- threatofrain 3y agoThat's not collusion. Collusion is a pattern of behaving between multiple competitors which has an end effect of coordinating on price. The policy focus on regulating collusion should be on patterns of behavior which reduces competitiveness in markets. IMO there's a stronger policy argument for saying that Apple shouldn't be copy-pasting prices from other places like Playstation. That's much closer to collusion.
- COGlory 3y agoGoogle paid potential competitors cash to not compete.
- threatofrain 3y agoAnd this entire post is basically a question of "But what about Apple?" When Google licenses out Android they've essentially created an Android marketplace. Apple avoided this problem by not being open.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]